Peter Jackson's talent is making the fantastic realistic, often doing so with a sky-high budget and production values that make fantasy settings all too real. From the fantasy trappings of his now-classic Lord Of The Rings Trilogy to his terrific reimagining of King Kong, Jackson has demonstrated a gift for story telling that places him in the ranks of the great modern directors.

Strange then, that the biggest problem with his latest, most real film, is that it isn't alive enough. The only way the viewer is to know that it's the 1970's is that it says so in the beginning. The only other time we get any indication of the time period is when we see the protagonist prancing around in hippie garb in her fantasy world.

That protagonist, played by the extraordinary young actress Saoirse Ronan, brings the movie alive, even though she's dead most of it. As she flees the scene of her horrific rape and murder, we see something of both beauty and terror, of innocence lost brutally. Unlike most murder mysteries, we know from the start who the murderer is, which plays to this movie's strengths more than anything. Stanley Tucci, until now famous for being Meryl Streep's sidekick, gives a chilling portrait of an isolated soul finding solace in the most disturbing, horrific way.

The rest of the acting, unfortunately, fails to live up to the grand standards set by Tucci and Ronan. Mark Wahlberg is particularly unbearable in the important determined-father role. This may be due to the scripts over-zealous happy family routine that encompasses the film's first act, or it may be that he has a niche where he performs well and this isn't it. Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon do some good to roles that are poorly underwritten.

This film contains several good parts, but fails to come together as a whole. In one scene you'll watch Ronan's Susie walk into a blood-drenched bathroom to see her murderer reveling in his accomplishment, only then to be taken back to a family that just isn't interesting without her in it. Some of the overbearing fantasy sequences of the in-between world Susie watches from combined with a watered-down PG-13 version of the source material bog down the material to being only average.

Grade: C

By Matt Erspamer